The Names of the Doctor
by keepcalmandkissmequick
Summary: The only stories he believes in are the ones where a wise old wizard falls out of the sky and rescues the demons.


"Come! Come _on_!"

"I love Uncle B's stories."

"His life is _amazing_."

"They're just stories, silly. It's not they're like _real_."

"Sure they are!"

"Are not, you big baby!"

"How come you listen, then?"

"C'mon, he's starting!"

An ancient throat cleared and instantly every child in the room was silent.

_That is right, children. Not every fairytale is truth. Fantastical as the universe is, there is no magic. There are no miracles. There are no true heroes or villains, and everything that you have ever been taught to believe is wrong somewhere. _

_I come from that place. _

_I come to share my story, because that is all that I am in the end. A story. All I can hope is that it was a good one._

_But this is not entirely my story, and I did not know it entirely until a good many millennia after it came to pass. At the time I was too young, too naïve, too cynical—but I see that you do not understand. I am glad. _

_You should not have to know what I felt._

_No, this story is about a very old man. He was so old that even he did not know how old he was; sometimes he said he was 953 and sometimes he guessed 1200. I never knew. But because he lived for so long, he lost so many friends, until he began to wonder why— but again, I am sorry. That is a story for another day. What is important is that, when this story begins, this man had just lost a very dear friend. _

_He replaced her with another, one whom he felt he could grow to love just the same, if only she would give him a chance. He would do anything to earn that chance. So he took her to see the ancient Earth city of Pompeii, and she was as dazzled with the splendor of history as he had hoped she would be. But she was not like him. She was human, and back then humans lived for so short a time... barely a hundred years. They made up for their brevity by loving and building walls around that love. That is how they created the magnificent cities of old. _

_There was a fire within that Earth girl, and she loved with power._

_The old man made a small, fatal mistake. He arrived in that ancient and glorious city the day before a volcano was fated to erupt and swallow the civilisation in smoke. Now, this man— no, child. He could not save the city. The explosion was a fixed point in time, so to alter it was to destroy the balance of the space-time continuum. He knew this. He accepted it. But his companion, who was so fiercely delighted with this ancient spectacle of humanity, could not accept it. She begged and pleaded until the ancient man, struck with a sudden fear that she would abandon him to the loneliness he fled, capitulated. _

_He decided to rescue one small family. This family consisted of a father, a mother, and two children, four flecks of light amongst a raging maelstrom of life, fated by chance to a grisly fate. He rescued them in his ship. He saved their future. He would not leave them there to die. _

_He became The Man Who Never Would._

_He hoped that Time would not notice. And for a while, it seemed that Time had forgotten. Millennia passed. But Time does not forget. _

_Time was merely awaiting its chance to reclaim what had been lost._

The speaker paused to regain his breath, his thoughts, and, his most devout listener noticed, a tear.

_Next we turn to Earth year 2008 Common Era. There were then thousands, and in the interim had been billions, of families consisting of a father, a mother, and two children. To our eyes, any of these families would have done. But for some reason unknowable to us, Time required a particular family living in 2008 for its purposes. This family was surnamed Frobisher._

_The fixed point in time upset by the ancient man's rash actions needed to be reestablished, and for the time-space vortex no movement of heaven or earth was too great. The calamity that served as the vessel of destruction for this family was an alien race that the humans called the 456._

_This was one of the human race's first encounters with alien life. None knew what this new species was capable of. So when the 456 descended to Earth in a flash of smoke and threats, humanity had no way to gauge that they were bluffing. The planet had no choice but to capitulate to their demands._

_It was not an easy decision to make, nor a unanimous one. After the horrific decision was made the planet descended into anarchical chaos. I was there. In my young days I thought that it was the end of the world. I waited for the ancient man to come, knowing that he was our only hope to escape unscathed. _

_He never appeared._

_I later learned that he was there. He watched, and he walked among the desecration, and he smelled the acrid smoke. Perhaps he even saw— I lost someone there. I lost someone beautiful and brave and good. _

_He may have seen me collapse in the ashes. _

_It would have been simple for him to have stopped it. It would have taken nothing more than a few whispered words in my ear, warning me that the enemy was bluffing, to halt the carnage. But he did nothing, because he knew. Don't misunderstand me—he was not hard-hearted. This sacrifice must have burned him to his core. But somehow he knew that this catastrophe was the result of his saving four innocent souls millennia before. What massacre would be the result if he took it upon himself to avert this planetary tragedy? _

_So he stood back, and let the drama unfold. Hundreds died. Thousands lost their lives. Among them the Frobishers. The man watched every moment of it, because that was his penance. He forced himself to share in every bit of agony experienced in the planet over those five days. _

_It wasn't enough. There could never be enough deaths on his shoulders._

_He became The Predator._

The speaker allowed silence to reign for a moment in respect for the fallen. The previously boisterous children bowed their heads.

_This is not an easy story to tell, children, but it needs to be told. It needs to be remembered. Someday you will understand why._

_We return again to this ancient and lonely man. He has now irretrievably lost that woman he tore the planet apart for. He can never see her again. Such is his curse. He stumbled, alone, across barren landscapes and lush fields, the empires of the past and the ruins of the dark ages, but he could not outrun his memories. Perhaps he had imbibed some of that Earth woman's fire, and could no longer cease to love._

_So he gave in and returned to save her and the planet he suffered to love. He faced an ancient enemy in mortal combat for planet Earth. He and this enemy were the last two of an omniscient race. No one but this other man could truly understand his agonies and his ecstasies, no one but him could understand what it was to be a speck saddled with controlling the space-time continuum. _

_This enemy was our ancient hero's only chance for true companionship._

_But this enemy was determined to obliterate the planet and propagate his own image. For him it was not enough to reach the whole of time; he had to force it to bow to him. He was ruthless. I met him once, and still I remember how very—cruel he could be. _

_Our man was given a weapon and faced with a choice: to destroy his adversary and only companion, or to betray the planet Earth. Here was a chance for him to kill and still save. A twitch of his finger on that ancient weapon was all that it would take to destroy his beloved opponent forever._

_But the massacre he had caused was still too recent on his mind. Could he really murder again so soon? For all of the pain that he caused, what he really wanted was to heal._

_So he offered the enemy a chance: join him, renounce the cruel ways, and live in freedom. The enemy was ultimately too cowardly to accept. Yet the ancient man still found a way to spare the enemy's life, allowing him to live in exile. _

_That old man, with the blood of millions on his hands and every excuse to soak his fingers in more, made the choice to preserve life._

_He became the Doctor._

_Children, I come to tell you that there is only one type of fairytale that you can believe. The one where a wise old wizard falls from the sky and rescues the demons. If you ever hear that, I swear to you, it is true. _

_And if you ever meet that wizard—run._


End file.
